


A Long December

by indevan



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Future Fic, Hospitals, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 10:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5866432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His voice makes him think of his music box his mother had.  He used to sit on her bed and she would take her jewelry out of it, lifting the box only a little before slamming it down before the music could play.  She didn’t want to wear it out, she said.  A few times, he lifted it, just to hear the music.  It was tired and rickety and broken-sounding.  Oikawa is small on the bed with blue dents under his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Long December

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a while ago but just got around to posting it--just in time for christmas, right?

There’s something about the smell of hospitals in winter.  Iwaizumi thinks he’s heard it in a song before.  The antiseptic smell is enhanced, metallic, freezing.  Everything is polished chrome and gleaming.  Bright, bright.  It almost looks like a modern hotel rather than a hospital.  More than that.  An ice palace.  Everything slicked with frost.

Some doors are open, which surprises him.  He can see people sitting up, watching staticky, glowing televisions mounted on the wall.  As he passes, he sees glimpses of game shows and cartoons, fragments of a whole show that don’t add up in his head.  Distractions.  The hallway stretches into eternity of gleaming fluorescence and shiny, sparkling linoleum.  He fingers the visitor’s pass stuck to his shirt and thinks that the overexposed picture copied from his license doesn’t even look at all like him.

Oikawa’s room looks like some sort of spaceship and that must make him happy.  More chrome and bright, bright white.  Buttons on panels and a television showing a dubbed episode of Star Trek.  He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed.  The sheets are crumpled around him and they look like mounds of snow.

“Iwa-chan.”

His voice makes him think of his music box his mother had.  He used to sit on her bed and she would take her jewelry out of it, lifting the box only a little before slamming it down before the music could play.  She didn’t want to wear it out, she said.  A few times, he lifted it, just to hear the music.  It was tired and rickety and broken-sounding.  Oikawa is small on the bed with blue dents under his eyes.

“Hey.”

It’s not a god entrance but it’s the only one he has.  It’s hard to think of something to say to someone who’s in the hospital on suicide watch.  He avoids looking at his bandaged arm.

“Come in.” He gestures to a chair next to the bed.

Iwaizumi walks in and feels like his limbs are on tightly coiled springs.  They move stiffly and his steps seem forced.

“Is this Pon Farr?” he asks.

“Amok Time,” Oikawa says, sounding faraway, “But more or less.”

They sit in silence, watching the show.

“Holidays are coming.”

“I know.  I spent a lot of time picking out your present, Iwa-chan.”

They speak like it’s normal.  Like they’re chatting together on the computer or next to one another waiting for the train.  He can picture them before, Oikawa sitting on a bench, pontificating about whatever drama he was preoccupied that day.  The sun sinking below the buildings and Oikawa’s lids low and heavy, his voice thickening with weariness from another practice.  Half-asleep, his head slipping onto Iwaizumi’s shoulder and his own tensing as if waiting for him to shove him off.  When he doesn’t, he relaxes and hums contentedly.

His memory is warm, saturated with the late afternoon sun.  In reality, Oikawa looks at him, his face washed out and pale, eyes looking like someone really did punch him in the face for once.

“You don’t have to make small talk,” he says finally.  His fingers toy with the sheet and Iwaizumi stares at the identification bracelet.  Hard not to flick up to the bandages. “We can talk about it.”

That’s somehow so like him and Iwaizumi scowls despite everything.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

A slight smile curls on the corners of his mouth and for a second, despite everything, he looks like the old Oikawa.  It’s a relief and an annoyance at once.

“So.  What happened?”

Oikawa tugs at a stray thread on the sheets and then balls up the entirety of them into his hand.

“Pressure,” he says. “And my brain’s wiring, I guess.  I--hm--it’s hard to explain.  It’s sometimes like my veins are full of electricity that shoots it to my brain and I swing wildly between emotions and emotional responses.  At least that’s what the doctor says.”

He laughs and it’s like salt water on a cut.  Iwaizumi stays quiet.  He grabs the remote and mutes the television in the middle of Spock and Kirk’s fight.

“I wasn’t doing well,” he continues.  Rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. “Coaches, myself...and I felt if I just--I could.”

He mimes a motion over his arm.

“Release valve.”

“And?”

“And then I didn’t want to stop.”

Iwaizumi looks at him.  Notices in the corner a sad aluminum tree with some drooping ornaments.  Something hospital staff dug out of storage for the holidays.

“At least we’re spending Christmas Eve together.” That laugh again.  Sand raked over his face.

Iwaizumi looks at him.  Oikawa looks away, his smile gone.  His face has red marks on it, he notices, like he clawed at it.

“I’m tired,” he says.

“Yeah.”

They lapse into silence and he watches Oikawa take the sheets out of his hand and smooth them down at his crossed legs.  He looks thinner, somehow, and smaller.  What university’s taken out of him.  The Great King as that shrimpy first year called him, on a throne of white cotton.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says finally.

Iwaizumi reaches his hand out.  Oikawa’s closes around it.  He inches the chair as close as he can so his arm isn’t stretched and he notices how thin his hand feels.  His bones feel fragile and hollow, like a bird’s.  How long has he been falling apart without him noticing?

“Who else am I gonna spend Christmas with?” he balks.

Their fingers lace together and Iwaizumi kisses where their knuckles interlock.  Oikawa lets out a sigh and slumps back on the bed.  Kicks his legs out.  They look back at the tv where the sound is still muted and say nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up at http://vertigoats.tumblr.com for daily shitposting


End file.
